I have never tried them. Anyway, I was reading in a obit about Nick, he was supposed to be in The Wedding of Sarah Jane with David. But his health prevented it. That would have been amazing to have him meet another Doctor. And I am glad RTD wanted to keep using him, even if it wasn't on the main show.

I’ve always had a problem with UNIT. Growing up with late 70s and 80s Doctor Who, it’s always felt slightly not-quite-right-that, for a couple of years in the early 1970s, the Doctor spent all his time on Earth working for the army. That’s not what I think of when I think of Doctor Who. I think of an iconoclastic wanderer in the fourth dimension, not an establishment figure messing with test tubes in a laboratory.

And even now, I don’t quite get those stories. Oh, I appreciate and admire them – they’re disconcertingly well-made, beautifully constructed, and Jon Pertwee is never anything less than glorious – but they don’t feel like Doctor Who to me. Maybe it’s the way everything is a sort-of-washed-out-greeny-brown-grey. Or maybe it’s all the saluting and standing to attention. Or all the drawn-out chase sequences down sleepy country lanes. Or all those secret scientific research bases. Or the fetishization of weaponry. Or the way the stories keep on going after Episode Four, Episode Five, and Episode Six. Or all those jeeps – oh God, the jeeps, the jeeps, the jeeps!

So it’s odd, then, that the Brigadier has become such a fundamental part of Doctor Who. He spans the eras and is the only character to have appeared with all ten Doctor Whos. Well, nearly all of them. Technically speaking he never appeared with the First Doctor, although I like to think Bret Vyon in The Daleks’ Master Plan was cloned from the Brigadier (because, let’s face it, if you had the technology, you would definitely clone the Brigadier – he’s a useful chap to have around). And, okay, so he’s only met the Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Doctors in spin-off books, audios, comic strips, and that 1993 Children In Need fiasco. And he’s not met the Ninth yet. But apart from that, apart from the First, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth, he’s appeared with all ten Doctor Whos.

A character like the Brigadier shouldn’t be part of Doctor Who. After all, he’s the opposite of everything the Doctor stands for, right? The Doctor fights against the guys with guns and uniforms, not alongside them. And the Doctor usually defeats villains single-handedly using his wits, rather than relying upon military muscle to save the day. So what makes the Brigadier an exception to the rule? Why have we all taken the character to our hearts?

It’s easy to imagine how the Brigadier could’ve gone wrong. You just have to look at all the Brigadier surrogates the show has featured down the years – Captain Hart out of The Sea Devils, Colonel Faraday out of The Android Invasion, that guy with the bad teeth out of The Seeds of Doom. They all have one thing in common – they’re all absolutely bloody awful. Dreary, self-important upper-class berks with all the charm and personality of a bookcase. That’s what the Brigadier could have been, if it wasn’t for one important thing:

Nicholas Courtney’s twinkle.

Watch any episode with the Brigadier and you’ll see Nicholas Courtney giving a twinkly performance. Every story, he’s turning up his twinkle to ten. There’s never a twinkle-free moment when the Brig’s around.

When I say ‘twinkle,’ I mean he’s not playing it entirely straight. He’s not giving us a textbook military commander. If anything, he’s subverting that, playing against expectations, creating a character with a life beyond delivering exposition, shooting daemonically-possessed gargoyles, and giving orders to Sergeant Benton. He’s turning an underwritten and stereotypical character into something more complex, fallible, human, and, well, lovable.

We all have our favourite Brigadier moments, and they’re always the twinkly ones. “Chap with wings.” “The fellow’s bright green.” “Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.” “Are you in pain, Doctor?” “Get off my world!” Plus every single line, every single line, from The Three Doctors. The point is, he’s never taking himself completely seriously. He always has a sense of his own ridiculousness. And that’s what sets him apart from the Farts, Haradays, and that guy with the bad teeth. The twinkle.

Fan consensus has it that the Brigadier started out as a hard-bitten, intelligent military man, and only gradually became a joke figure – a Colonel Blimp-style buffoon, as the cliché would have it – as the shows’ writers sent the character up. But fan consensus, as is so often the way, is wrong.

You only have to watch the first scene with the Brigadier from The Invasion, back in 1968. He’s explaining to the Doctor and Jamie what he’s been up to since the ‘Yeti do’ – being promoted to Brigadier, forming UNIT, etc. But watch it carefully and you can spot the subtext – he’s spending the whole scene daring them not to giggle at his hilariously fake stuck-on moustache.

Next time you watch a story with the Brigadier, pay attention to what Nicholas Courtney is doing. Watch out for the bemused smirks, the ironically arched eyebrows, and the incredulous side-glances. It’s the performance of someone who’s forever attempting to appear authoritative, who is forever trying not to laugh. I don’t mean Nicholas Courtney – I mean Lethbridge-Stewart. That’s the reason we love him so much – because the fellow is clearly not at ease being a Brigadier. In fact he finds it all rather embarrassing, but he’s doing his best to keep a straight face, to act the part, in the face of great provocation.

And that, I think, is why he works so well with the Third Doctor. The Doctor needs a figure in authority to be rude to on a regular basis – he does it more often that he uses his sonic screwdriver – but with the Brigadier, you know he never really means it, because the Brigadier is only playing at being the pompous one in order to humour the Doctor. We know that, deep down, they’re the best of friends. We know the Brigadier is, at heart, a big old softie.

Because of Nicholas Courtney’s twinkle.

Last edited by happydalek on Tue Mar 08, 2011 3:50 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : to correct my typos)

Forgot about this detail: in very, very tiny print, in the tiny margin outside the "box" that frames this article, there's a note from the editor that reads "The Brigadier met the First Doctor in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. You're fired. -Ed."

Forgot about this detail: in very, very tiny print, in the tiny margin outside the "box" that frames this article, there's a note from the editor that reads "The Brigadier met the First Doctor in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. You're fired. -Ed."

I watched Seeds of Doom yesterday with the commentary, and they said that they did try to get Nick for this episode, and Android Invasion as well, but he was unavailable with another job. Too bad, as we would have had 2 more episodes with the Brigadier.

I watched Seeds of Doom yesterday with the commentary, and they said that they did try to get Nick for this episode, and Android Invasion as well, but he was unavailable with another job. Too bad, as we would have had 2 more episodes with the Brigadier.